But First, Coffee: Now You Can Brew Your Nespresso With an App

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But First, Coffee: Now You Can Brew Your Nespresso With an App

Nespresso

As the old adagio says, there's an app for that. And starting today, there's an app that will brew your espresso without requiring you to leave your chair.

The coffee-in-a-pod company Nespresso has introduced Prodigio, which lets the especially lazy prepare coffee from a distance using the Nespresso app. The app, available for both Android and iOS, features a few notifications just for the Prodigio. It can tell you when the water tank is empty, when the tank needs descaling, and when you're low on capsules. And yes, you can order capsules straight from your smartphone.

Sudo Make Me a Coffee

The best feature is the remote brewing. You can fire up your preferred cuppa before dragging yourself out of bed, or schedule it to brew at a specific moment. This is not Internet of Things, however. Not yet, at least. The Prodigio still requires you to interact with it, since it can't refill the water tank itself or install a coffee capsule. But as long as you remember to put a fresh pod in place after making each cup, you'll always be able to walk to your Nespresso when there's already aroma in the air. Follow me for a second and think of an IFTTT automation that links your location to the app and prepares the cup as you walk into your home, or when you hit the office. It seems like the ideal next step.

The second great feature of the Nespresso app is the ability to calculate when it's time to do a little maintenance. Water hardness can be calculated with the dedicated (analog) stick that comes with it, and the app can predict the ideal time for descaling the Prodigio based on how many cups you've brewed.

Nespresso Prodigio comes with three settings, Ristretto, Espresso, and Lungo, and is available with a milk frother if you want to make lattes and such. If you're not a smartphone person, there are still buttons on the top of the machine to operate it the old fashioned way. That is so 2015. But since Prodigio is the Italian for prodigy, marvel, wonder ... why not just surrender and say abracadabra?

The Prodigio is available in silver and something called 'titan' and costs $249 ($299 with the milk frother). It's available through elect retailers and the company's own website.1 Both models include a "welcome kit" that contains an assortment of 16 Nespresso Grands Crus capsules.

About Those Pods, Though

Is there a cost incurred with a machine that uses disposable pods? Of course there is, as there is when you by a venti latte at Starbucks (those cups, stir sticks, etc.). Still, anxiety about the environmental impact of the pods is increasing. But Nespresso says its proprietary aluminum pods are recyclable. You do need to take them to an Nespresso retailer, though, or have them picked up via UPS at home if the collection service is offered in your area. There's not an app for that, yet.

[1] This article was updated to correctly state the retail availability of the Prodigio.